so tell me when it's time (to say i love you)
by entersomethingcleverhere
Summary: The night Oliver moves in with Felicity, he muses about how far he's come as a human being and how much his life has changed for the better. A bit of a drabble and a bit of fluff — hey, we needed it! Part 4 of "21 Guns" series


**A/N: I've had this story waiting on the back burner for a while. It's light and fluffy and drabble-y, but that is something "21 Guns" desperately needs. I hope you enjoy it!**

 **As always, find me on Tumblr at entersomethingcleverhere. Come say hi!**

"I distinctly remember doing this like three months ago," Tommy grumbled as he lugged a heavy box into the loft of the Emmerson Building. "That happened, right? I'm not crazy."

"No, you are most definitely crazy," Oliver reassured him. The other man came up behind his best friend, carrying a much lighter box labeled WINTER CLOTHES. "But it is possible that you may have been doing something similar to this not too long ago."

Tommy made a face at the other man. "I'd also like to point out that I am the one doing _you_ a favor by dragging all your heavy sports equipment and you are carrying a box full of gloves and scarves."

"Hey, Felicity said that I need to take it easy on my bum leg," Oliver responded solemnly.

Tommy grumbled something under his breath. Oliver didn't quite catch all of it, but he heard the words, "smug," and "asshole," and "ungrateful."

Far from making him impatient, the scene made him smile instead. After two wonderful weeks on a deserted island with his fiancee, he was finally moving into his new apartment with said fiancee. With the help of his sister and his best friend, of course.

"You're the best, Tommy," Oliver told him as they hauled the boxes through the living room and up the stairs. "The best mover a guy could ask for."

"Shut up," he grumbled.

The two best friends continued their bickering all the way up the stairs until they reached the master bedroom. Felicity and Thea were already there, sorting through the boxes they started bringing up an hour ago.

"Hon, where do you want this?" Oliver asked.

Felicity looked up from the box of shoes she was sorting and Oliver felt his heart leap in his chest at the sight of her face. They'd known each other for seven months now, but he didn't think he'd ever get used to her beautiful blue eyes trained on him.

Luckily, he'd get to spend the rest of his life staring back into them.

"What have you got?" Thea asked.

"Sports equipment and winter clothes."

"Put winter clothes down here," Felicity directed. "You can put the sports equipment in the spare bedroom."

Tommy started grumbling again as he turned on his heel with the box in his arms to make the dangerous trek across the hall.

Felicity quirked an eyebrow while Thea rolled her eyes.

"Your best friend is a wimp," Felicity commented.

Oliver chuckled. "Yep." Then he dropped the box he was carrying at his feet so he could cross the room and drop a kiss on his fiancee's lips as well.

Despite Tommy's complaints of deja vu, moving Oliver's belongings took much less time than moving Felicity's stuff. Since he had spent the last five years in the Army, he'd whittled down his possessions to the absolute essentials, which made moving and unpacking a much shorter ordeal.

They had finished bringing in all his stuff in less than an hour. Once they were finished, the women took a break from unpacking to collapse on the couch in front of the TV. Thea ordered the pizza and Felicity pulled out the beer from the fridge. She knocked off the caps of three bottles, then came back into the living room.

Tommy took the bottle from her with the air of a man who'd just finished running the Boston Marathon. "Thanks, Liss," he sighed in exaggerated exhaustion.

Thea rolled her eyes. "He did this too when we were helping Felicity movie in," she informed her older brother. "He accidentally dropped a box on his foot and he spent the rest of the day limping like he had a broken toe or something."

"Hey!" he protested. "You don't know, it really could have been broken!"

Oliver laughed as he took a sip of his beer.

He missed this, he mused to himself as he watched Thea and Felicity tease Tommy over his dramatics. Sure, there was definitely camaraderie among his squadmates while he was in the Army, but it was borne of a common fear. Death lurked just around the corner for all of them, so they lived like they would die at any moment.

Here, back in Starling with his friends and his family, there was no impending doom, no promise of a gory death that hung over them to force them together. They were together because they wanted to be.

There was love here.

The pizza arrived and the minute Thea set it on the coffee table, everyone started digging in. The food preoccupied everyone for a while as they chewed, but eventually the conversation started back up.

"So have you two decided on a date for the wedding?" Thea asked. "Mom wants to know when she should reserve the country club for the reception."

Oliver grimaced. "God, do we have to have the reception at the country club?"

"Why?" Felicity asked. "What's wrong with the country club?"

"It's totally cliche," Tommy answered her. "Everyone has their reception at the country club. Or, to be more precise, everyone who's part of the 'Starling Elite' has their reception there."

"I think the most recent was Carter Bowen," Thea piped up.

"Ugh," Oliver growled. He'd totally forgotten about Carter Bowen. "You mean douchebag extraordinaire? I can't believe he found someone who was willing to spend the rest of her life with him. Poor woman."

"It probably didn't hurt that he has a couple million in the bank," Thea added wryly.

Felicity chewed in thoughtful silence. "Oh!" she piped up. "Is Carter Bowen a doctor?"

"Yeah," Tommy nodded. "Something neither of our parents will never let us forget."

"I met him the other day, I think," she said. "When the hospital director was giving me a tour. He's a general practitioner, I think. He was really nice."

"No he's not," Oliver muttered. "He's a pretentious dillweed."

His vitriol seemed to make Felicity smile, because she scooted closer to him and pecked him on the cheek. "Don't worry, honey. I think you're much handsomer, much braver and much cooler than Carter Bowen will ever be."

Thea and Tommy made gagging noises. Oliver responded to their reaction by throwing a crumpled up napkin at his best friend's head.

The conversation moved from Oliver and Felicity's pending nuptials to her first few weeks at work at Starling General. On one hand, it was much less stressful because all the trauma surgery cases that came through the doors were almost always the result of a car crash or some other kind of accident. She had yet to operate on anyone who got blown apart by an improvised bomb.

On the other hand, it was much more stressful because there were just _so many_.

"What's the weirdest thing you've seen so far?" Thea asked. She sat on the floor next to the coffee table, her legs stretched out in front of her and leaning back as her hands propped her up.

Felicity pursed her lips as she pondered the answer to that question. "I think…" she began, "I think the weirdest thing I've seen so far is a guy who got drunk with his best friend and accidentally ended stabbing a knife all the way through his palm."

Tommy and Thea both hissed at the image. "Eww," the latter intoned. "That's disgusting."

"What made it so memorable was the fact that he was so drunk, he couldn't feel any of it," Felicity continued with a shrug.

"Ahh," Tommy nodded. "Been there a few times."

"Pretty sure Ollie was right there with you," Thea teased.

The man in question shook his head in retroactive embarrassment at all the drunken shenanigans he and his best friend had gotten into back in the day.

"Really?" Felicity asked slyly, a twinkle in her eye. "Do tell."

Oliver shrugged, reaching over to wrap his arm around his fiancee's shoulder. "Nothing to tell," he hedged.

"Oh you are so full of shit," Tommy laughed. "Remember that time we got so drunk out by the lake on the Fourth of July and you absolutely _insisted_ that shooting off fireworks was a good idea?"

Oliver grimaced at the memory. He only had vague recollections of that incident — the rest of what he knew was from other people's accounts.

Felicity threw her head back and laughed. "Oh really? And how did that turn out?"

"It was Ollie and our old friend Twitch who were futzing with the rocket," Tommy began. "Laurel and I were sitting in the hatchback of my car, drinking beer and watching the whole thing happen."

Oliver groaned and buried his face in Felicity's shoulder. He knew what came next.

"Well anyway, Twitch and Ollie finally get the fuse to light, but once the spark makes it to the thing, it doesn't go off. That's when we realize, in our drunken idiocy, that we've planted the it way too close to the car."

Thea rolled her eyes and shook her head, but she still had an indulgent smile on her face.

"What happened then?" Felicity asked.

"Ollie shouts, 'SHIT!' and he and Twitch make a run for it while Laurel and I jump out of the hatchback and run after them. A few seconds later, the rocket finally goes off, but it swallows up the whole car in smoke and sends ashes and debris fucking _everywhere_. When the smoke finally clears, we realize that it's melted almost everything in my trunk, including the plastic cooler with all the beer in it. And some hot debris even made a chink in the plastic on my dashboard." Then Tommy let out a dramatic sigh. "That car was never the same after that."

"Not like you didn't have a three others to replace it," Oliver reminded him.

"That's not the point," Tommy answered, miffed. "Every time I took it out after that, it always smelled like gunpowder."

Felicity laughed hard at that.

The remnants of the pizza and beer slowly disappeared as the four of them exchanged a few more stories. By the time things were winding down, the sun had long since set.

Thea and Tommy lingered in the loft a little while longer until the former announced that she was tired and it was time for her to go home. When Tommy still didn't move from his spot, Thea cleared her throat pointedly, then nudged him hard with her elbow.

"Oh, right," he said, getting up to his feet. "They need alone time. For sex stuff."

Oliver rolled his eyes. Felicity blushed. Thea scowled.

"Way to be subtle about it," the younger Queen muttered darkly.

Once Tommy was standing, she grabbed his wrist and dragged him out of the loft while shooting them a wave and promising Felicity that she would drop by in a few days. Tommy, on the other hand, just sent the couple a knowing wink before disappearing out the door.

The loft was quieter after they left, but it was still full of warmth. It was almost like their loving energy still lingered.

Oliver turned to his fiancee with a big grin, and she must have been thinking the same thing because she crawled into his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck.

"You were quite a youngster, weren't you?" Felicity teased.

He rolled his eyes. "Remind me to kill him when I wake up tomorrow."

She giggled and the sound did something to his chest. Without another word, he wrapped his arms around her waist to bring her closer to him and pressed a slow kiss to her lips.

* * *

A few hours later, Oliver had Felicity wrapped in his arms as they cuddled together in their bed, the sheets tangled between their legs. Her lovely skin was still flushed, her hair spread out on the pillow underneath her head like a golden halo.

He couldn't stop staring at her.

She turned her head to look at him. "Stop that," she commanded, her nose wrinkled a little.

"What?" he grinned.

"Stop staring at me like that," she insisted. She turned her body toward him so she could bury her face in his chest. "You're making me feel weird."

"Sorry," he said, though his tone was far from repentant. "I couldn't help it. You were glowing like the sun and I couldn't look away."

Felicity pulled her head up so she could roll her eyes. "Ugh, seriously, stop."

He chuckled and pulled her closer to press a kiss against the wrinkle right above her nose. "I make no promises." Then he dipped his face lower to kiss her on the lips.

When they had pulled away, she propped her head up on her elbow while her other hand traced the scars all over his muscled torso. If it had been anyone else, Oliver would have shied away from the touch. But it was Felicity — she'd seen them a million times. She knew the story behind each scar. Some she even knew more intimately than he did.

"What are you thinking?" he asked.

She bit her lip absentmindedly, her eyes still on his chest. "Just thinking about that story Tommy told earlier. Thinking about your childhood. You sound like such a different person than the person you are now."

"That's because I am," he murmured.

Felicity looked up to stare at him. "Do you sometimes miss the person you were, though? Do you wish you could go back and do it all differently?"

He pursed his lips as he considered her question.

"I mean, I guess I do sometimes," he began slowly. "The person I used to be had fewer responsibilities. His life was simple. I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss that a little bit.

"But as for wishing I could do it differently..." He shook his head. "Not for a second. Because it all led to you."

Her eyes softened into a smile, and she leaned forward to kiss him again.

Oliver pulled away and this time it was his turn to trace her skin. Though she bore no scars, he knew she was marked internally, in ways that fundamentally changed people. In ways that would have killed a lesser person.

But not her. Not Felicity Smoak.

"What about you?" he asked. "What were you like when you were younger?"

She groaned and shook her head. "Ugh. I was such a little shit. It's so embarrassing now that I think about it."

He quirked an eyebrow upward. "You're kidding, right? Did you not hear the story Tommy told earlier?"

She sighed. "Oliver, you don't get it. I used to be this super misunderstood, angry teenager. I dyed my hair black because I thought it represented the angst in my soul."

That certainly took him by surprise. He couldn't see Felicity as anything but the bright blonde she was now.

"Did you listen to angry teen music?" he teased.

She nodded solemnly. "It was the only thing that could express how I truly felt. My mother was completely beside herself throughout the entirety of my teenage years. She hated how dark I dyed my hair."

He chuckled. "So then what did you do? Besides listening to angry teen music. Did you and your friends get drunk at the skate park or something?"

Felicity scoffed. "No way. We'd never be so pedestrian as to do things outdoors. We were strictly an indoor crowd."

"Oh, sorry. Silly me."

"Mostly we just sat around on our computers all day, trolling really weird corners of the Internet and hacking into high-security corporate servers for fun. But after a while it just got...boring. By the time I got to my senior year, I turned into a white hat. God, did that piss off my friends."

"What's that?"

"Basically someone who uses their hacking powers for good," she shrugged. "Or if not good, uses them above board. White hats usually sell their services to big companies. Big companies ask these guys to try and hack into their servers and databases any way they can to help them identify weaknesses. If you manage to find one, they pay you well. I basically paid my college tuition through white hat hacking."

"Wow," Oliver intoned. "You must have been really good."

"I was the best," she said seriously.

He shook his head and smiled. "Do you ever think about what we might have been like if we met earlier? Like in high school or something?"

She rolled her eyes playfully. "Are you kidding? If we knew each other in high school, you wouldn't have even glanced my way. And there's no way I would have let myself get caught going around with _Oliver Queen_. You'd totally ruin my reputation."

That made him laugh. "Then I guess it's a good thing we found each other when we did," he grinned.

She chuckled with him. "I guess it is."

The conversation slowly drifted away, and Felicity's eyelids drooped lower and lower until she fell asleep, curled up as close to Oliver as she could. As she dozed, he watched. And he thought.

He thought about how different they had been when they were younger. He thought about how different they were now. And he thought ultimately about how little it mattered at the end of the day.

They were lucky enough to find each other in that godforsaken hospital. She saved his life in more ways than he could have counted and in more ways than he deserved. How could anyone possibly fault him from wanting to hold onto that for the rest of his life?

Her left hand rested on her stomach, and the emerald engagement ring on her finger glinted in the dull light seeping through the high windows of their loft. Gently, he took her hand in his, running his thumb over her knuckles.

This hand, he thought, as his eyes ran over every single wrinkle, memorizing the shape of her fingernails. This beautiful hand. This hand that had the power to save.

How lucky he was to be able to hold this hand.

"Felicity?" he murmured.

She didn't move. Her eyes remained closed and her breathing stayed steady.

"I love you," he smiled. "I love you so much."

And with one last soft peck on the corner of her lips, he settled in next to her and fell asleep.


End file.
